New monitor's pissing me off

[gokuDX7 2,871]

I got a new emachines 19" wide screen HD monitor on Black Friday for $100. As soon as I got my new monitor home I hooked it up and tested out some movies and web browsing. Right away I noticed my graphics where way off from what I'm used too. Things where/are way to bright and way to sharp, font's look narrower and whiter, and colors look off or different from what they should be. So logically I ended up changing some of the graphic card settings to try and make it better. Stupid me because I didn't write down what I previously had it set too . It wasn't the default values either . In any case it still looked weird to me after making hundreds of changes and wasting hours upon hours. I then ended up setting the graphics card settings to the default values and fooled with the monitor settings....still no good. Every time I thought I had it looking the way I wanted it I'd notice something wrong with an image or some colors would be off (mainly grays and blues). Then I ran the NVIDIA graphic card display optimizer several times. Some things would look amazing while other things would look shitty. For example some sites where I used to see light grey where now showing as pure white and when I changed the contrast to correct that, other things would brake and look too dark or out of place. finally after 2 days of fooling I kind of got the gray issues fixed by messing with the contrast on both the graphics card and the monitor hundreds of times. Now colors like Blue are showing either darker then I'm used too or lighter then I'm used too. It's pissing me off so much. I just want it to look the way my other 2 monitors looked >.<. This is really the first time I've ever had issues with making a monitor look right. Errrr.

Another thing I'm noticing a lot now is almost all the anime I've downloaded has semi shitty quality even in HD 720p. I'm guessing it's because the shows where encoded poorly and this monitor, being an HD, is picking up those little errors that my last two non HD monitors just blended to look smooth and clean. In either case I'm sad that the quality ended up going down....now I know why people bitch so much about show quality's on MyAnimeList.net.

Most images now have pixelation in them too. Something that wasn't as bad before.

Fonts are to narrow, white and sharp.

The last issue is, the monitor being a wide screen can't do 1280 x 1024 and look decent. Things just look to blurry or crappy to keep it in that mode. The best I can get out of it is 1440x900 which isn't all that great in my opinion. I'm trying to figure out what people see in wide screen. You basicly sacrifice 3 inches on the bottom for 3 inches on the side... Every show I watch now has black bars either on the tops and bottoms or on the sides because the dimensions are different .

Errr I'm really thinking about returning the monitor. I know it's probably nothing to do with the monitor but I'm just at the point where I cant take wasting another 4 hours trying to make this look good. As it is I've wasted a week trying to get this thing to look right.

If anyone has any suggestions I'm open to them! I'll probably be returning this by the weekend if I cant get it looking the way I want it.

PS. my eyes are bleeding after trying to write this using the monitor. The next is just way to narrow, sharp and white. Something I can change but it only makes it worse .

Edited December 4, 2008 by gokuDX7

[Sledgstone 8,672]

You'd think a monitor like that would have optimal settings... maybe your video card just doesn't like it? Or maybe now you're too picky? j/k.

[Eppy 3,446]

i think you are just so used to a certain grain of graphics that it looks off to you...and i agree with Sledge i think you are jsut too picky

[gokuDX7 2,871]

It's true I'm picky however I've never had issues making monitors look the way I want them too. I'm at work right now, on two SyncMaster 940T's and they look amazing.

I think it's the monitor....

[Dubird 6,815]

Only thing I can suggest is uninstalling ALL video drivers and see what happens. If it comes up with the Windows driver and looks like it's supposed to, then it's the driver or video card. I don't suppose there's a way to take an actual picture of it so we can see what you mean?

[gokuDX7 2,871]

Only thing I can suggest is uninstalling ALL video drivers and see what happens. If it comes up with the Windows driver and looks like it's supposed to, then it's the driver or video card. I don't suppose there's a way to take an actual picture of it so we can see what you mean?

I don't think it has anything to do with the driver. The graphics can look decent, it's just some colors don't look the way they should or the font and screen color are to white or sharp, grays are whiter...etc.

If I took a screen shot the image would look perfect in your monitor since the image doesn't take into account my monitor settings. I could try and take a pic with a camra and post it but it wouldn't look right .

I looked up my last LCD online and found out it had a 450:1 Contrast ratio, I have a feeling my new one has a much higher ration then any of the monitors I've used before. This would explain why I cant make it look anywhere close to how my past monitors looked. Almost all my old ones had lower contrast ratios. A higher contrast ratio means that the screen will tend to have deeper blacks and brighter whites. This kind of explains why shit looks so damn white. I'll have to see when I get home since I'm at work right now and dont know the model number of my new moniter. If that's the case then there's nothing I can do other then to buy a new LCD with a lower ratio which I doubt anyone sells anymore . The weird thing is my work monitors have one of 1000:1 and I can set them relatively close to how my others at home look....to the point where I'm happy and it doesnt hurt my eyes.

[Dubird 6,815]

I didn't say screenshot, I said photo. Do you have or can borrow a digital camera? Granted, it won't be perfect, but we can at least see the problems you're describing. And it very well could be the driver not talking correctly to the monitor. I had that problem when I got my LCD monitor. I had to uninstall and reinstall my video driver before it worked correctly.

[gokuDX7 2,871]

hmm I changed the contrast again and I think that fixed some of the problems. blues still seem too white and text still seems too narrow and sharp. I tried changing the DPI but that ended up making the text super long and narrow so I changed it back lol.

Images and video still seems like they have quality loss. I can easily see bad encoding and pixels still.

I'll try and take a digital pic later and post it. If only I could correct the blues just a tad bit and fix the screen sharpness (its already set to it's lowest values).

Edited December 5, 2008 by gokuDX7

[Pchan 5,162]

Yeah, it'll make a big difference when you're watching hentai in HD.

[gokuDX7 2,871]

I couldn't take a pic . Every time I did it looked way off from what I was actually seeing.

The good news is I think I finally got it to look like my other monitors! I'm Still noticing some images are darker then I'm used too or lighter then I'm used too. An example is my "Gundam Seed Is Here" sig that I made in 1999. It's frigging hard on the eyes and the blues are weird. The words blend into the background, especially the "Is Here" part. Does anyone else notice that or is it just me?

Some things still seem to bright, too white, and sharp.

Also pixelation on images and some bad quality spots in anime are still noticeable. It's especially bad when I zoom in on images that used to look decent or perfectly fine. I guess they where probably always like that and I just never noticed. I'll upload an image or two that I see pixelation in that I never used too. Tell me if you guys see it too.

Save each image to your PC and view them just to double check.

In this image it's pixelated around and in his face area. Also around his body seems messed up:

Her face and both of their body's have faint pixel marks all in them:

Pixels around the words and the lower part of his face.

Please note I never noticed this in every pic only in a few. It seems like most of my pics have flaws. Even some HD ones. I'll upload more later on or tomorrow.

@GG - thats one of the reasons I'm pissed. Most of my hentai images look like shit now. Watching anime feels like I'm watching a high quality version of crunchroll now . Even Gundam 00 in the HD 720p quality has flaws that I never noticed before. I opened on of the first eps this season and started watching it and noticed several spots where random boxes would show up (bad encoding). It wasn't a big deal but I'm used to crisp clear video and now it's not as good even though I'm using an HD monitor lol.

Edited December 5, 2008 by gokuDX7

[Sledgstone 8,672]

Those pixelations are there, its just that now that you are viewing them in HD the imperfections are greatly magnified. Have you downloaded HD and SD quality eps/subs and checked them against each other for the same pixelation problems? Maybe if you now crap up your display by desharpening the image and dulling down your high resolution you can go back to enjoying your SD goodness? *throws old crt monitor at you* Be happy you've moved up in the HD digital world!

[gokuDX7 2,871]

The sharpen is already at it's lowest. It cant get any duller lol. Shit still looks to sharp. My last monitor was an LCD sledg lol. I do have a few CRTs around though.

and ya, I've compared SD and HD versions of the same shows. Theres a major difference now which I already could see in my old monitor but now it's like 20 times more "in your face omg I want to rip my eyes out". I cant really enjoy watching anything anymore....maybe it's because I'm a designer and I notice all these little flaws.

BTW. does my Gundams Seed Is Here sig look weird to you? Refresh the page a few times if you don't see it.

[Eppy 3,446]

not a single thing looks off to me and i call ditto on Sledge's post...welcome to the HD world cry again when you got a dead pixel in teh middle of your screen

[gokuDX7 2,871]

not a single thing looks off to me and i call ditto on Sledge's post...welcome to the HD world cry again when you got a dead pixel in teh middle of your screen

I have programs to fix that eppy .

I set everything to their default values today and fooled with the settings a bit more. I think I have it at a resumable level now. Still not used to all the bad quality images on the web and on my pc. I'm hopping I'll just get used to HD anime looking like how SD versions looked on my old monitor .